One day, you're sitting at home watching television with your family just enjoying a nice relaxing day away from work. Suddenly, an emergency alert comes over the television followed by an interrupting news cast. Reporters are broadcasting live from the news room. They inform the public that something has occurred that seems to have come straight from a horror movie. Their breathing is rapid, they barely had time to enter make up before going live, and their voice seems to be unnerving.
The general public is on the edge of their seats as everyone's informed of a terrorist attack in which seems to be of a biological nature. There's a reporter on the scene who's broadcasting the horrific events. In the background of the report, you notice that police are shooting at people who appear to be sick. You're not quite sure what to think, until you see one of those people attack and begin feeding on the reported as the camera man drops the camera to the ground and you hear him running away.
So what happens after you see the broadcast? You have absolutely no time to take it what you just saw. Your job is to now BUG IN. Anything you have that can be used to board the windows and doors, use it as quickly as you can. Leave absolutely no opening that can be penetrated easily, but at the same time, leave at least one small opening for sight on each side of your house. Cover the boarded windows with thick or dark blankets.
Unplug your refrigerator and oven, because chances are that you won't have electricity for much longer anyway, and move them to barricade both outside doors to your home. Hopefully, there will be an outlet near by to at least plug the refrigerator back in so that you can keep things cool until power goes out. Next, you'll need to position furniture so that if the home does get penetrated, you can fall back to another room and barricade yourselves in quickly until you come up with an exit plan. Make absolutely sure that you keep an emergency bug out bag ready at all times, and never leave it more than 5 feet away at all times.
If you do these things and keep everyone in the home quiet, you'll be able to maintain your family's safety for a number of weeks, at least until your food supply runs out. For the average person however, the household food supply normally only lasts about 2 weeks. As soon as you notice that the food supply only has a couple of days left, you need to pack it up and "bug out". Get your family quickly and quietly to your nearest largest vehicle.
The moment you get into your vehicle, your first thought should be to drive to the nearest gas station and fill your tank. Assuming that there's still power, this shouldn't prove to difficult. As soon as you find a gas station take a quick look around to make sure their aren't any threats close by and then put the gas nossle into your gas tank and run into the store with some kind of make shift weapon like a tire iron. You'll need to walk around the counter to the cash register and just touch either the screen or the key board to authorize your gas purchase (even though you aren't actually purchasing the gas). Look around the room quickly for any supplies such as gas cans, food, drinks, oil, over the counter medicine etc that you might need. Hurry outside and fill up your tank. Once your tank is full though, don't hang the nossle back up but rather leave it laying on the ground so the next person who comes along can fuel without taking the time to go inside and waist such precious time.
You're next stop should be a store of some kind to gather more supplies. You'll want to keep moving. During the first few weeks, survivors will be a lot more trusting and trustworthy than they'll become in later weeks. Look for other families or groups who seem like they could help watch your backs. Your best bets though, would be to look for individual people who have nothing to lose by helping you and nothing to gain by betraying you. They need you just as much as you need them.
Eventually, you're going to want to find somewhere to sleep. You're vehicle may be a thought, but not the ideal choice because it could be easily overcome by attacks from both zombies and pillagers. You're best bet when locating a shelter to camp out in, would be a two story or more building. If you enter a downtown area, most of the buildings have top floor apartments. Chances are that you may not run into to many zombies in these areas because most of them will be trapped inside of the businesses in the downtown area. Find a building with fire escapes as the main apartment entrances. Grab everything you can carry in one trip from your vehicle and make your way up the fire escape. Before you enter the building, make sure to slowly look inside. You'll of course want to make sure everyone's back is covered. Slowly make your way through the apartment checking every room.
After the apartment is secure, barricade any other entrance you find and begin searching for supplies. As everyone else is searching for food and weapons, you need to make your way back to the fire escape and if possible pull the ladder up. If pulling the latter up isn't an option, and there's actual stairs, you need to find a way to remove those stairs or make them unusable.
To be continued...